Burn the Playbook

Independent. Editor-owned. Built for people who still want the record.

May the bridges we burn light our path forward.

David Sacks' Waiver Wire

By Michael Starr Hopkins

The cleanest conflicts in Washington do not always come in a brown envelope. Sometimes they come with a memo, a title, a calendar limit, and somebody saying the paperwork makes it fine.

David Sacks was named Trump's special adviser for AI and crypto. The public fight is not whether he knows the industry. He does. That is the point. He came from the money side of the table into a job helping write the rules for AI and crypto, while public reporting found hundreds of remaining tech investments tied to him and Craft Ventures.

The number that matters is ugly: a New York Times analysis, summarized by TechCrunch and others, found 708 tech investments tied to Sacks and Craft, including 449 AI-related investments. The White House answer was not a clean wall. It was waivers.

Source label: New York Times analysis summarized by TechCrunch, SF Standard, Public Citizen, plus White House ethics waiver materials.

The Terrain

Sacks' official title put him near two of the biggest rulebooks in the economy: artificial intelligence and digital money. Those are not side issues. AI is driving data-center construction, power demand, labor fights, surveillance fights, and federal procurement. Stablecoins are a roughly $317 billion market as of April 2026, according to a Federal Reserve note.

So when the same person sits near the rulebook and near the investment universe, the question is not whether he is smart. The question is who gets protected when smart people write rules for markets they already understand because they have money there.

The Machine

The machine's favorite trick is turning a conflict into a definition problem. If the definition gets narrow enough, the conflict disappears without anybody giving up power.

The March 5, 2025 White House memo said Sacks had taken steps to reduce conflict risk from digital assets. A later White House ethics document described his special government employee status and said he was expected to work 130 days or less in a one-year period. Axios reported in June 2025 that Sacks was divesting stakes in prominent AI companies including xAI and Meta, while still working under waivers.

That is the move: sell some holdings, classify some holdings, waive some restrictions, then keep the policy lane open.

The Proof

The proof is not one spicy headline. It is the stack.

The Lever reported that the Trump administration issued an ethics waiver clearing Sacks to work on regulatory issues connected to his financial holdings. TechCrunch reported that Sacks had two ethics waivers, one for crypto and one for AI. SF Standard summarized the Times investigation this way: Sacks remained invested in 449 companies with AI products after selling about $200 million of crypto investments and pulling out of Meta, Amazon, and xAI.

Then the policy moved. Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, creating the first major federal stablecoin law. Five days later, the White House released America's AI Action Plan, signed by Michael Kratsios, David Sacks, and Marco Rubio. The plan's first pillar called for removing red tape and letting private-sector-led AI growth run faster.

Source label: Federal Reserve stablecoin note, White House GENIUS Act fact sheet, White House AI Action Plan, and IEA data center electricity forecast.

Who Pays

Ordinary people pay when public policy becomes a concierge desk for private power. They pay in higher electric bills when AI data centers strain the grid. They pay when crypto rules are written fast enough for the industry and slow enough for consumers to learn the hard way. They pay when government says the conflict is managed because the paperwork says the conflict is managed.

That is the part Washington wants to make boring. Do not let it. Paperwork is not automatically accountability. Sometimes paperwork is the costume accountability wears while the money walks through the front door.

Between The Lines

The defense is always competence. He knows AI. He knows crypto. He knows Silicon Valley. Fine. A firefighter knows fire too. That does not mean he gets to own the building, write the fire code, sell the insurance, and call anyone nervous a hater.

The test is simple: would this arrangement look clean if the party labels were reversed and the beneficiaries were your enemies? If the answer is no, then the issue is not partisanship. It is power.

Hiring

This fight needs investigators, organizers, lawyers, data people, policy writers, local reporters, and designers who can turn records into pressure.

Watch · BTP

Sources

Manage preferences: {{subscriber_preferences_url}} | Unsubscribe: {{unsubscribe_url}}